Hey, good afternoon it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose farm today
I want to talk about growing roses in pots or growing roses in
Containers and I get this question an awful lot on talking to customers at the farmers market
They buy a rose from me that the next question they ask is : Can I grow this in a pot?
And of course, I'm selling it to them in a pot. So the
Smartass answer is yes
I think the question they're asking is: can it be grown in a pot long term and my answer is still yes
But now I owe you an explanation
See, I'd really like it if more people grew their roses in pots for a longer period of time
I want to show you a couple things here. So this here is a rose that I propagated last year from cuttings
Just tip it out of its pot here
It's well rooted
But it's basically
Grown from last summer until this spring in this tiny little pot and now it's ready for an up-pot to the next size
The next size is this one here. I potted this one just a couple of months ago
So I want to show you it's actually nice and stable in the pot here. And if I tip this one out
I'll find that it too is rooted to the bottom of the pot
Somebody buys this from me at the farmers market just potted it a couple months ago
Do I want them to put it into the ground right away. I would actually prefer they grow it on for a little while
I'd love to see this one put on some new shoots. I'd love to see it get stronger thicker shoots
I'd love to see it root even firmer into that pot before they put it into the garden
So what should they do with this? I'd say water it add some fertilizer to it
grow it on even for another year on your patio on your deck on your balcony and
Enjoy the Rose for a while. Live with it for a while so you know how it looks on you
You don't want to grow it in this boring nursery pot here. Very easy solution for that. Just grab
An outer container like this one here, they sell in most of the hardware stores most of the garden centers
They sell pots like these that are really just intended to drop
these one gallon pots inside of so you just put it in there and
It actually shields the outside of the pot from sunlight, so it doesn't warm up excessively
So it moderates the soil temperature a little bit for you and you can grow this on for another year
So this one out of the way, let's assume you've done that
Let's assume you grew it on for another year and now you've got a bigger
Rose like this that is like super well rooted into the ground into the pot here and you're wondering what to do with it
Well now you have options and it's the same option you have
Every time your rose reaches a point where it's actually drying out quickly between waterings
It's grown large in comparison to the size of the pot and your options are do I
Pot it up to a larger pot
Do I put it in the ground in my garden, or do I stop growing this variety? Maybe you don't like it anymore
Maybe it's not it doesn't suit you so much
I mean
I like this Rose but tastes change over time and you've given yourself a year to sort of consider it and live with it
So you take this and let's say you pot it up to the next size
I can give you containers that will nest a two gallon pot
So I'll show you a clip here me putting it into a two gallon pot
Also, you can grow all the way up to a five gallon pot
So that might last you two or three or four years of growing this Rose
in pots in your container that on your patio and your deck where you live outside is fine and
Every time you get that choice, do I want to pot it up?
Do I want to put it in the ground or do I want to give my rose away?
Because I want to try something new and I like this approach to gardening. I like this approach to container gardening
I'll tell you more about how to do the container gardening here
But I like the approach because it acknowledges that the fundamental nature of gardening is that we manage change
Your plant will change over time
It's going to grow, it's going to need more things or different things and also you're gonna change your tastes will change in gardening
And so the idea that you're buying something as a as a permanent fixture in your garden may not be all that realistic anyway
So let's talk about what your roses will need
While they're in a container like this one or any of the larger sizes that I'm showing
All right
I may slip up from time to time and talk about the soil that you need to use inside of your potting
And the truth is this does not resemble
soil if you dug up garden soil from your yard
Put it into a pot like this one here and tried to use that to pot your roses
It will both be too heavy and it wouldn't have the right qualities. It wouldn't drain its water
Well enough it wouldn't retain water well enough for the roses that you want to grow
So what we're using is actually a soilless mix and what that is depends a little bit on where you're buying your soil
Locally here. I did a whole other video on how I use potting soil that's made out of
Wood chips or wood bark or composted wood product, and that's great for my potting in my greenhouse
but if you're just trying to pot for
For containers in the home. You don't want to buy it in bulk
You probably go to something like this, which is a soilless mix. This one is made out of peat moss and perlite
You can buy this
locally here from pro mix or sunshine mix you can see that it's quite light because they've mixed it with
the the peat product and they've also mixed in perlite and they've got some lime in there and and
Something to help it to retain water or not or not shed water
So that's what this is made out of but again, whatever your mix is. It has to be light
It has to retain water and it has to drain properly which seems like a strange mix of things you're asking from your soilless mix
What it is in your local area?
I mean it might be rice hulls and coconut fiber where you are
But you ask at your local nursery or garden center or a hardware store?
For a mix of soup for container gardening and that's what you're looking for. The other thing I use is
I'll get some
Some prills here
this is my slow release fertilizer and in terms of what fertilizer you put into your
your your rose pots
I like slower these chemical fertilizer because I get something very predictable if you tried to use
Organic fertilizer into pots if you're good at that and you know a lot about it
I'm sure you could find a way to make that work for you for
beginners or you know
I'm a professional grower and I still use the slow release fertilizer
Brand names for that here might be Osmocote or Basacote or multi-cote or flora cote
You know the COTE on the end usually implies that it's coated to give you a controlled release in your fertilizer. I
Integrate some of that into the soil as I do my potting
You gotta be careful. How much you put in
It is always better for you to under fertilize than to over fertilize. So look at the recommendations
You can go on the low end or on the medium end. I certainly wouldn't try the high end
Even though roses are heavy feeders
Because you always have the option later on of doing a liquid feed on the foliage and through the top of the pot
Or adding more fertilizer later. So I usually err on the side of
fertilizing lower because that's
Much less damaging to the plant if you get it wrong
Now how often should you water your rose? That's not a question
I can answer for you easily because obviously this one here that's like super well rooted and
Got a ton of top growth is going to empty out of water
It's going to it's going to transpire its water through the leaves of the plant
Way way faster than that other one that I showed you
That's that's just being in a pot for a couple of months
The one that's only been in the pot for a couple of months
I only water that twice a week this one here every day or two. I have to water that
Well, otherwise, I'm gonna see major signs of wilting in my roses
And that's a good signal now that this is ready to go into a larger pot
So if you're wondering what when's the right timing to consider putting your roses into a larger pot?
So I guess to sum it up when you keep a rose in a pot in a container
What you're doing is you're replacing all the functions of
nature in terms of watering and feeding that rose and obviously you'll be taking care of it the same way you would normally
With pruning and deadheading and so on
So where should you place your roses in containers? Anywhere you want... that's the beauty of having them in pots
you can put them wherever you want on your deck or on your patio on your balcony around your yard and
how they perform and
In general roses do like full Sun exposure
But full Sun really includes anything six hours and upwards of Sun a day so you can play around with a little bit
I find that my roses really appreciate especially during a hot portion of summer. Remember they're in container
So they're gonna suffer moisture stress a little bit easier then your roses on the landscape
So if they get a little bit of afternoon shade that usually helps them out quite a lot
One of the note I'll say about it is that if you're over wintering your roses and containers
I like to tuck them away somewhere outside of the the direct flow of
Moisture from above and wind from the side usually in our climate I get those hard winter winds
So if you can tuck them against the eaves of the house into an unheated garage
I use my unheated greenhouse that we usually help them to overwinter a little bit better. We're at the one last point
I'd like to make about growing roses and containers. Is that even though many companies when they're selling roses for container gardening
They're trying to sell you miniatures or patio style roses
They may call them or small floribundas or shrubs and I won't argue the point
Those smaller roses are easier to manage in containers
but if you continue to upgrade the pot size it opens up a way wider array of
roses to you
So if you wanted to grow a climber if you want to grow a large hybrid tea or shrub or even a species rose
On your patio or in your outdoor?
Gardening space but grow it in a pot
You just have to continue to upgrade that size of the pot but that doesn't really intimidate me too much
I often go to the garden center and see them growing big trees in
Like 50 gallon pots and so on
So it's a it's it's not something that is unknown and I'd love to see you push the envelope on what you can grow
on your container and the only downside
Which there is none is that if you keep it in the pot for a long time and you eventually decide that
This rose needs to go into the ground by the time you put it in the ground
It's gonna be a much larger more robust more well rooted rose and it's just gonna do better in the ground
So there's no downside there. Alright. Thanks so much for listening today if you have any questions or further
technique questions about what to do with
Roses in pots just to hit me up in the comments below this video. Thanks so much for watching